Previous Next

Aaaaaarrrgghhhh!!! I hate it! It should be banned. They ought to put a government health warning on it. Don't ply Deflektor if you value your sanity. I did, and look what happened to me. More cunning than Rubik's cube, more mentally stressful than a game of chess, more intellectually demanding than Blind Date, Deflektor is tough on the nerves.

Like a lot of things Gremlin do, Deflektor is another highly original game, the only thing like it is the bit in Dan Dare where you have to blast a path to thenext level with the laser. Not seen Dan Dare, huh? Well, let's just say it's like cat's cradle with laser beams instead of string.

To start with, there's a laser and to end with there's a receiver. Oddly enough the receiver is right next to the laser. Elsewhere on the screen is an array of fixed mirrors, revolving mirrors, absorbing blocks, reflecting blocks, refractors, polarisers, fibre optics, mines, cells and probably a few things I can't remember. The problem is to get the laser beam to the receiver via this vast array of optical technology. As if that weren't enough in itself, before you can accomplish this amazing trick with mirrors you must first exterminate all of the cells.

That's what you do. The difficult part is, of course, how, bearing in mind that you have only limited energy and, therefore, time to think it all out, a lot of which you will initially spend working out what half the things on the screen do. The mirrors are straightforward enough, they reflect. And, as anyone who pays any attention whatsoever to their physics teacher knews, the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Or, to put it another way, the beam bounces off the mirrors at exactly the same angle that it hits them. By moving the pivoting mirrors, you can bounce the beam to other mirrors and form a light path all over the screen.

Not all the cells are in direct line of the mirrors though, and you will have to resort to some of the other optical technology available to zap them. The things to avoid are the mines and absorbing blocks which will cause the laser to overload. Total reflection (i.e. reflecting the beam back on itself) also causes overload and, if you don't do something about it, quick, it's meltdown time.

The revolving mirrors are pretty drastic when it comes to destroying cells - they scatter the beam stuff about their games for no other reason that it's absolutely true. What's more, they never pay undisclosed substantial sums of money into my numbered Swiss bank account, not even a bottle of Scotch for Christmas. Makes you sick.